If you've ever shopped at the Meijer off Woodward Avenue just south of 8 Mile in Detroit, you may have run into Gina Moorman.

Moorman is a part-time shopper for Shipt, a company that delivers groceries to your house from Meijer. Like most Shipt contractors, whenever Moorman works, she proudly wears her green Shipt T-shirt, emblazoned with a logo that looks a lot like a spinning UFO or drone.

The shirt is free advertising for her services, the gregarious 56-year-old Detroiter said.

It's also much more comfortable than what she wore as an executive assistant.

"I love it," said Moorman, who is a single mom and has gone back to school to study business. "If people have attitudes, you don't have to interact. You can just be out — and free. If my son needs to be picked up, I can do that. You have the freedom to make your own schedule."

Moorman is among hundreds of independent contractors in Michigan who work for Shipt, which, along with Instacart and other companies — including Door to Door Organics, FoodHome.com, Go Get Grocery Delivery and Schwan's — is changing the way people get groceries.

Since the late '90s, when e-commerce started to become commonplace, supermarkets have struggled to offer online delivery services, in part, because many shoppers simply preferred to pick out their own fresh food, and because it wasn't an easy task.

Grocers had to have to technology that would allow customers to select from tens of thousands of items — more than other stores; they had to get grocery lists (and payments) to the shoppers, and they had to deliver the food without it spoiling.

"It sounds easy, but there are so many levels of complexity to it," said Kraig Johnston, who founded food delivery companies about 20 years ago that are now FoodHome and Go Get Grocery Delivery in Madison Heights. "Once people come to the website, though, they start to realize how much time they save in placing orders online."

In the past few months, companies like Shipt and Instacart, which have Silicon Valley offices, have started offering it in Michigan in a bigger way.

Need milk? Bread? Meat? A week's worth of groceries? Just pull out your iPhone and order them the way you might a pizza. If you want, you can even order aluminum foil, toothpaste and toilet paper.

Meijer, the Grand Rapids-based supermarket, entered a formal partnership with Shipt to offer home delivery service in metro Detroit less than a year ago. In Michigan, Meijer is the only store from which Shipt delivers groceries.

The Shipt service has been so successful, Meijer said, that it expanded it earlier this month to more Detroit suburbs and Ann Arbor. Eventually, Meijer wants to offer the service in all of its 230-plus supermarkets in the Midwest.

Instacart started delivery in Michigan two months ago. In addition to delivering groceries from Meijer, it also delivers from Costco, Kroger, Plum Market and Whole Foods Market.

These services are different than curbside pickup, which also is available at many stores. That service is handled by store employees.

In other parts of the country, Uber, which has a courier service named UberRush, makes deliveries for Cincinnati-based Kroger through a formal partnership with the store. That service is not yet available in Michigan, said Rachel Hurst, a Kroger spokeswoman.

"We think it's a vital part of our business moving forward," she added.

The biggest benefit to supermarkets, of course, is they keep selling groceries and they remain competitive as companies, including those now selling food kits through the mail, attempt to take away business.

"Our ultimate goal is to make sure that customers have multiple ways to shop," said Meijer spokesman Joe Hirshmugl. "Convenience is king to customers. We're looking to give them ways to shop our stores in any way they want, whether it's ordering online and picking up at the curb, walking into the stores — and now, home delivery."

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Shipt shopper Gina Moorman of Detroit scans through her shopping list as she walks through the produce section at Meijer, Thursday, June 22, 2017 in Detroit.(Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

Sensory experience

The slice of grocery customers ordering online is still small, but it's growing quickly.

Grocery shopping via computer went up from 6.6% to 9.1% this past year, and ordering via cell phone and tabletwent from 2.5% to 3.5%, according to a survey last month by Prosper Insights & Analytics in Worthington, Ohio. About 88% of shoppers said they went into a store.

"Grocery is a difficult industry to crack through e-commerce because most people prefer to go into the stores," said Jeff Wells, an editor with Food Dive, a Washington, D.C.-based industry trade publication. "They want to see and smell and touch the product they are buying. It's a very sensory experience for a lot of people."

But, the service is finding fans.

Jenean Matthews, 53, of Oak Park uses it because she has multiple sclerosis, which makes it difficult for her to walk.

"I'm not able to go to the store," said Matthews, who calls the service “a godsend.”

Rose Ritter, 45, said she uses the service weekly because it offers her family convenience. She and her husband, David, both work and have two kids, a 12-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son.

She said she knows that the online orders cost more, but they can afford the convenience. She added that the deliveries to their Huntington Woods home save them at least two to three hours of shopping — a chore she doesn't enjoy — each week.

Safety and service

To use Shipt, you need a membership — which costs $99 a year, or $14 a month.

Through Shipt's app, you can place your order for items to be delivered wherever you want. The app allows you to schedule a delivery as much as 24 hours in advance. If there are no shoppers working when you want your groceries, it will prompt you to request a different time.

On orders less than $35, the company tacks on an additional delivery fee of $7.

You also will pay more for your groceries — about $5 for every $35 spent — than they would if you bought them in the store yourself. The price difference, the companies said, helps pay the shoppers. You can't use coupons, and most people also tip for the delivery, about 10% of the order.

Instacart, which also charges a similar annual fee, said it charges close to the same price online that you'd pay in the store.

To become a shopper, Moorman had to pass a background check and do some online training. And even though she's an independent contractor — which means she uses her own vehicle, pays for her own gas and gets no benefits — the company keeps tabs on her customer-service ratings.

"For a part-time job, it pays well," Moorman said.

Including additional financial incentives and tips, Shipt estimates shoppers can earn an average of $15-$25 an hour before taxes. Many shoppers estimate they take home less than that, but they add that the pay, even at $10-$12 an hour, is better than minimum wage.

Shoppers watch to see what orders are placed and decide which ones they want to pick up.

Shoppers are offered financial incentives to accept your order quickly. In rare cases, when no one accepts your order, the company will get back to you and suggest another time.

To protect customers and shoppers, the orders that shoppers get show the customer's first name and only their last initial. Both parties also get a temporary phone number that works like call forwarding so they can text and call each other. An hour after the delivery is made, the number is deactivated.

Matthews' order, for instance, was for 11 items, a small one compared to a family order, which might include more than 100 items.

Moorman agreed to deliver it and have it on Matthews' doorstep by 2 p.m.

"It's an easy job to do, but it's hard to keep," Moorman said.

The challenges: Delivering the groceries on time, and keeping customers satisfied.

So far, Moorman said, she hasn't had bad reviews, but she knows other shoppers who have.

Going online for food

To make delivery services for grocery stores work, two things happened: better mobile technology, which included ubiquitous Wi-Fi so shoppers could easily access checklists on their phones. And the emergence of third-party companies, such as Shipt and Instacart, which helped minimize the stores' financial risk.

"They say to supermarkets, 'We'll handle the online ordering, procurement, shipping, and all that,' " said Wells. "For a grocery store to do that, it's pretty complex, expensive and hard to scale."

It also means, though, that for a single transaction, several different groups are involved.

There's the store, which supplies the food; the delivery company, which manages the technology and dispatches shoppers, and the actual shoppers, who, like Uber drivers, are independent contractors.

Meijer declined to disclose whether the service generated any additional revenue for the chain.

To get a sense of where online grocery sales may be headed, consider this:

In 1994, Amazon.com, the Seattle-based retailing behemoth, started as an online enterprise that sold books via the Internet and mailed them to your home. At the time, national books chains and even many book lovers scoffed at the idea.

Who would buy books without being about to see and touch them?

But, over the years, Amazon's fortunes — as well as the kinds and number of items it sold — have gone up, while competing booksellers have struggled. The competition was so devastating to Ann Arbor-based Borders that the chain went out of business.

Grocery delivery companies are hoping to have similar successes.

Shipt — which started in 2014 in Birmingham, Ala. — now offers delivery services via its mobile app in more than 50 cities in 11 states. The company has millions in investment capital and has hired thousands of people to work as contractors to be shoppers.

"The thing about the Amazon deal is nobody quite knows what they are going to do, but the possibilities are limitless," said Wells. "It's a completely different acquisition, where a large online retailer is taking over a brick-and-mortar retailer."

Amazon, Wells added, could end up transforming the industry by making the purchase and delivery of groceries as commonplace as it has made buying books — and just about everything else.

Finding fresh fruit

When Moorman shops, she brings a couple of insulated bags to keep hot items hot and cold items cold. She drapes a red cloth over the end of her basket to make it stand out in a sea of carts. This way, when she parks her cart and walks away to hunt for an item, she can come back to where she left it and find her basket.

Moorman goes to great pains to make sure she selects just the right ones.

"We've got to make sure we're getting the best quality," she said, inspecting each orange.

Moorman said she tries to minimize the number of steps it takes to get the items she's buying. Usually, she said, she starts in produce and tries to end in the frozen section.

She also, she said, tries to maximize customer satisfaction.

If, for instance, Matthews had ordered tortillas, but not salsa, Moorman might have called to ask if she wanted some dip, too.

Customer satisfaction is essential, Moorman said, because after each delivery the customers rate the shopper. Too many bad reviews, Moorman said, and shoppers find themselves out of a job. Shipt locks low-rated shoppers out of the app.

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Shipt shopper Gina Moorman of Detroit chats with a fellow Shipt shopper John Doonan of Detroit as she waits in the checkout line at Meijer, Thursday, June 22, 2017 in Detroit.(Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

Insights, inside jokes

As Moorman shops, she stops to greet and chat with Meijer workers and other Shipt shoppers.

There's a camaraderie among them.

They exchange tips and jokes in person and on closed Facebook groups.

Janell Kirkland, one of the fellow Shipt shoppers Moorman ran into while filling Matthews' order, was shopping for another Shipt worker. Her client was going on a trip and didn't have time to get the items herself.

Kirkland, a teacher, said the job is an easy way to make extra money.

But, some customers, she said, can be frustrating because they are extraordinarily particular about their food. Shipt shoppers refer to them as "grape people." It's an inside joke that comes from requests that the shoppers only buy firm grapes and fruit that tastes sweet.

Moorman made her way around the grocery store, collecting the items Matthews wanted, and then headed to the cash register.

Customers pay for their orders through their app. The amount is sent to a Shipt credit card that the shoppers use to buy the food. Discrepancies and additions to the order are reconciled later. Tips are paid through the app, too.

When Moorman delivered Matthews' order, she offered to take the bags to her kitchen and unpack them.

Matthews declined.

She said the service has allowed her to get groceries without relying on friends and relatives. But, she added, even if she could go to the store on her own, she'd probably still use it because getting groceries delivered is convenient

"If I could get around and work," she added, "it probably would come in handy because I'd be working!"

Seeking home delivery?

An increasing number of grocery stores are starting to offer or considering offering home delivery in Michigan. Check with your store to see what programs are available. Here are some websites of companies that deliver: